


i wonder if your therapist knows everything about me

by angryelftwink



Series: no one can touch you now that you're mine [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: BDSM mention, Drinking, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25077124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angryelftwink/pseuds/angryelftwink
Summary: Whenever Zevran and Isabela meet again, they catch up over drinks. This time, he needs to tell her more than he knows how to say.
Relationships: Zevran Arainai & Isabela, mentioned Zevran Aranai/Male Brosca
Series: no one can touch you now that you're mine [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1812061
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13
Collections: ZevWarden Week 2020





	i wonder if your therapist knows everything about me

When Isabela finally heard someone jimmying the window open, she smiled and poured a second glass of sip-sip.

“There you are, Zev.”

“My apologies. I had a bard to kill.” He tumbled into the room gracefully, then strode over to the chair she had set. “Such hospitality as always, Isabela.”

“I have to give you a reason to keep coming back, don’t I?” She crossed her legs and grinned. “Besides the high-quality Antivan alcohol, of course.”

“Ah, I can always rely on you to open your best bottle for me.” He wafted the glass around and sighed contentedly. “The mage won’t let me near it, and the dwarf drinks from the bottle.”

Isabela raised an eyebrow. The opening she'd been looking for, handed her on a platter. “The dwarf? That one who broke up the fight earlier?”

“Oh! Oh, no.” Zevran was _blushing_. Dear her, that boy was something special indeed. “The other dwarf. We have a large company.”

“That’s unlike you.” She took another sip. “Let’s see. I’ve been hunting down relics for Castillon—man sends a shiver down my spine, but the coin’s good. With that whole Blight situation, I’m running a side business ferrying refugees to the Marches. What brings _you_ to this Taint-ridden backwater, Zev?”

“I left the Crows,” he said airily, gesturing with his glass hand before taking a sip. “I have taken up with the Grey Wardens instead. Not joined up, mind you—more of a, ah, mercenary?”

“Now that’s worth drinking to.” It was a relief, much as Isabela tried to downplay it as they toasted. The Crows were rubbish, no better than _him_ , or her mother. She should have taken that scrawny little teenager as a cabin boy and run, but they’d both known that would never work. Grey Wardens, on the other hand, might just have the pull to keep Zev safe. “Aren’t the Grey Wardens horribly wanted around here? Some nonsense, what was it—treachery? Killed someone?”

“It is a long story.” He sighed, putting the glass down on the table. “Teyrn Loghain is a madman. He performed the crimes of which he accuses the Wardens, then hired me to… erase the evidence. That lovely young man you met today spared my life and offered me another job. I took it gladly, and now we are on a quest for Andraste’s asses.”

“Andraste’s… asses.”

“I did not know there were any donkeys in the Chant of Light either,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

Isabela sighed and took half a swig of sip-sip. “Well, if you find the Sacred _Ashes_ , be sure to tell me. Castillon would pay arm, leg, and _cock_ for that.”

“Cock is cheap, and such men as he are never as endowed as they wish us to believe. Ask for his ass.”

She kicked him underneath the table. “Well, come on, tell me about your new friends. Starting with that dwarf I’m going to be training.”

Zevran licked his lips before taking another drink—yet another nervous tell. Isabela tried to hide her interest. She couldn’t help it—she was a busybody, a gossip, a _matchmaker._

“Angharad is from Orzammar,” he said with a shrug. “He is not exactly our leader, but close enough. He has a habit of breaking up bar fights, but not one of frequenting brothels. And—he dislikes the stench of liquor.”

“Odd name, for a dwarf.” Odd description, from Zevran. So impersonal and flattering.

“And the taller gentleman accompanying him—odd indeed for an elf, is he not?” Zevran leaned back and crossed his legs. “Some important elven bastard, from how the nobles at Redcliffe treat him. A fine fighter who pretends he’s far less clever and capable than he is, but so young and green! I was never so young, was I, Bela?”

“You were younger,” she said flatly. Isabela sighed. “You tell me right off this one’s a bastard but leave out the other’s from the Carta, Zev? I know a brand when I see it. If he’s out of Orzammar, he’s Carta sure as I’m a pirate.”

He took a drink as she sat back. “Fine. I’m fucking him.”

“Well, I knew _that_. He’s easier to read than you are.” Isabela rolled her eyes. “Have you gotten into an honest-to-Andraste relationship, my assassin friend?”

Zevran downed the glass and sputtered horribly. Unphased, Isabela took it from him and refilled it halfway.

“Maybe?” he squeaked out, with another slight cough. “I don’t want to talk about it, Bela.”

“It’s only me,” she complained. “But fine. I won’t push you.”

“Maybe when I’m… less sober,” he admitted. “Life is strange, Belladonna. But wine? Wine is forever.”

“I’ll drink to that,” she said, with a smile and a sip.

~

“So I told him,” Isabela said as she slowly slid off the chair, “I told him that… that…” She broke into snickers and giggles.

“You had better tits than him?” Zevran giggled, already quite on the floor.

“ _I had better tits than him!”_ Isabela snorted and slid all the way off the chair, spilling just a little of the remaining sip-sip in her hand. “I have better tits than lots of people.”

“You have better tits than me.”

“You have pretty good tits.”

“Angharad,” Zevran said, raising one hand and bumping it on the table. “Angharad has _faaaaaaantastic_ tits. Bela. Have you seen them, Bela?”

“Nope. They good?” She grinned.

“So good. They are not so hairy as the beard makes you think, and so—so _muscled_ , so _lean_ , yet still enough to…” He made an evocative noise. “They are good tits, Isabela.”

“Fantastic. Love a man with good tits. And he’s got a good arse. Nice and tight.” She nodded approvingly, hitting her head against the lag of the chair. “Love a man with a good arse.”

Zevran moaned, sliding until he lay more than sat. “He’s so pretty. Pretty and nice and… oh, Bela, Bela, what have I gotten myself into?”

“That arse, I hope.”

He moaned a little louder. “Isabela, I’m going to sober up before I go back so he doesn’t have to think about his mother. He wouldn’t even care! I just hate his mother so much!”

“Good for him. You’re good at hating people’s mothers.” Isabela turned and spat, because the floor could be a stand-in for her mother at the moment. “Has little Zevvy found a special someone?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know—I heard them talking about Matheraf in the Chantry and for the first time, I swear to you, it pained me. I know what it must have been like to stand at Andraste’s side, and to have _betrayed that_ —once, I understood, that this was how the world worked and it was no sin not to believe, not then. I do not understand now, Isabela.” He chuckled, raising a hand in some airy gesture. “Oh, Dread Wolf take me.”

“You are _soooooooo_ drunk.” She snorted sip-sip out her nose and lazily wiped it off.

“All the time.” He lowered a hand to his eyes and chuckled. “All the time. I am not the same man I was.”

“Not a fucking Crow anymore, so I’d call that an improvement.” Isabela decided she didn’t want to be on the floor anymore and slowly pulled herself up by the table until she could plop back in the chair.

Zevran remained on the floor, which was a habit of his when drunk, really. The floor or the bed. Thankfully, Isabela had become strong enough to carry him to bed long ago. “What was it you said when you got the ship? Something, something… take it away…”

“If you have it, they can take it away,” she groaned. “What did you say, then? It was something… sweet. Or it was really funny. Was it about my tits? Those are sweet and funny.”

“They _cannot_ take away your tits.”

“Yeah, that must have been it. So look, you’ve… you’ve got your tits.”

“But I want _Angharad’s_ tits, Bela. He can take those away. Anyone could take them away. My own folly could take them away.”

“I know you’re into some rough stuff, but tits are pretty hardy. You’d need a _biiiiiig_ knife to slip and screw that up.”

She heard him shifting underneath the table. “No, no, other way around on the rough stuff.”

“Right. So, it’s him taking away your tits. Naughty, naughty boy.”

“No. Not him. He wouldn’t…” Zevran groaned. “Not even _ropes_ , Bela. I gave them up for him.”

“Seriously? Not even ropes?” She stood and stumbled off to find something else to drink. Something a little less… well, a little less. “Love me a good tied-up man. Or woman. Ships have so much potential on the ropes.”

“He would not like it.” Zevran sighed loudly, still under the table. “It would frighten him. I would hardly call that sexy, so, no ropes it is then. No spankings. No… maybe choking. That perhaps I could… no, no. He is _gentle_ , Bela. Soft.”

“I should hope he’s not soft, if you’re doing it right.”

“Come, help me take off my shoe. I wish to throw it at you.”

“Baby. Throw my shoe instead, it’ll hurt more.” The first few days on land were the worst. Most of the time, they were the only days on land too. Isabela sighed and continued hunting through what bottles she’d brought ashore. “What was it you do for a hangover again?”

“Drink too much?”

“Did that. Next step?”

“Ginger tea and raw eel.”

“We’re in Ferelden.” Isabela groaned and sat herself on the end of the bed. “And eel’s not in season.”

He waved a hand lazily. “Then you jump in the ocean.”

“Sounds great. Let’s do that. Maybe we can get arrested for public indecency again.” She hauled herself up and slowly straggled to the table. “Come on, Zev. Up and at ‘em.”

“Aye aye, captain.” He groaned as he slowly, laboriously pretended to have trouble standing up. “Bela?”

“Yes, that’s me.” She grabbed him by the arm and started hauling very slowly.

“We will see each other again, I am sure, but I may never be this drunk while you are here, and there is a Blight after all, so…” He groaned, putting an arm around her shoulder. “Isabela, you are dear as a sister to me. And now… at long last, we are both free, are we not?”

“Sounds like.” She tugged him out the door. “Proud of you… _little_ brother.”

He laughed, and she tried to pretend it _didn’t_ tug hard on her heartstrings. “And gone soft,” Zevran said, taking some of the dead weight off her shoulders. “Ah, no worries, Belladonna. I will be my dreadful self in the morning.”

“You’re always dreadful.” She snorted. “Now, come on… which way to the ocean again?”


End file.
